In recent years, various kinds of head-mounted video display apparatuses that can be mounted on the head and that allow both audio and video to be enjoyed have been proposed and become available for sale. The weight of head-mounted video display apparatuses is reduced to a minimum, so that they can be used unobtrusively when they are mounted on the head.
In such head-mounted video display apparatuses, the weight of parts for displaying video can be reduced by, for example, putting some thought into the optical system thereof, and the weight of parts for listening to audio is reduced by adopting a pair of in-the-ear phones that are inserted into the ears when used. For example, a binocular head-mounted video display apparatus is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 10-293544.
On the other hand, various kinds of headphones for enjoying audio such as music have been used, such as the above-described in-the-ear phones, open-air headphones whose weight is reduced so that they can be connected to a portable audio playback apparatus, airtight headphones that are highly sophisticated for fine audio perception, and so forth. Of these headphones, the highly-sophisticated airtight headphones comprise housings producing sound effects, ear pads shutting out outside sounds by covering the edge of each housing on the side contacting the ear, and so forth. Further, the highly-sophisticated airtight headphones often include a large-diameter speaker. Therefore, in general, the size and weight of the highly-sophisticated airtight headphones tend to be larger.
As well as listening to music alone, on the music scene in recent years, there has been an increasing tendency to enjoy video that is produced to match with music, notably, for example, promotional videos.
However, these known headphones cannot be used to watch such video per se. Therefore, a separate video display apparatus should be used for enjoying the video. For portable use in particular, a hand-size DVD video playback apparatus, for example, comprising a small liquid display element or the like may be connected. However, in such a case, the video that is observed while listening to the audio is displayed on a small screen. Therefore, even though the audio is of high quality and has a sense of realism, the video is not as realistic as the audio.
On the other hand, even though the above-described known head-mounted video playback apparatus allows a large screen image to be observed, the audio playback function is not very advanced. Therefore, the head-mounted video playback apparatus is somewhat inadequate for fully enjoying music.
Subsequently, it has been considered that the head-mounted video playback apparatus may comprise a large headphone-type audio playback apparatus instead of the in-the-ear phones. However, in this case, the overall size and weight of the head-mounted video playback apparatus are increased, whereby the lightness and portability thereof are decreased.
Accordingly, there is a demand for an apparatus that places importance on high-quality audio and that allows video to be viewed easily.
To this end, the present invention is provided. The object of the present invention is to provide a head-mounted audio/video playback system that allows for listening to high-quality video and that allows video to be easily viewed as required.